I blew this VC away, but $60,000,000 was not enough of an exit for him.

Not easy to stun me, but I was stunned.

I know, I know, I said I would not take a VC investment and it’s true that we are avoiding VC’s because of a few reasons, but mainly because the goals of a VC are not always aligned with the founders or the company’s mission.

Someone who I trust made an intro and we checked into them and it seemed like a good fit. They were interested in SaaS, they were a very small team, and they were entrepreneurs themselves. They looked at my company, Book Like A Boss, and were interested to meet. So, what could go wrong?

I have to say the meeting was really going well. Glen (not his real name) really took to the product and was blown away by our numbers (19,000 users in 100+ countries, millions of dollars in earned income by our users, month after month growth etc.) and how we were able to accomplish so much being a bootstrapped start-up with a very small team.

We checked all the boxes for him:

·       Solving a pain point? Check!

·       Product Market Fit? Check!

·       Multi-Billion Dollar Market? Check!

·       Paying Customers? By the thousands! Check!

·       Users that are making money with your platform? Check!

·       A community that loves the brand and product? Check!!

·       A small and talented team that works well together? Check!

And I can keep going. He asked me what our goal was a year from now and 3 years from now and he felt they were achievable. He felt we could get to $1mil MRR in 3-5 years. And then came the kicker.

He said that he was very impressed and in almost every-way we fit the type of company they want to invest in.. but… He wanted to know more about our technology advantage. What will we have from a technological standpoint that will give us an advantage from our competitors? I told him without a doubt I have a ton of technological ideas (I already have 3 technology patents), but we are very customer focused and we are out to build an incredible product based on what our users want and own our space. I told him that I’m sure, as we grow, we will introduce technological innovations, that’s just the nature of a growing software company, but it’s not something we can outline now just to get an investment.

Then he said I can see you guys selling for $60,000,000 in 5 years. And I said Glen, if we sold for $60,000,000 in 5 years you would look at that as a loss? He said no, it wouldn’t be a loss, but as a VC he can only invest in things that can get to the $500,000,000 to 1 Billion+ mark. I told him that we are a much safer bet than something that is just technology that may or may not make it and he agreed, but as a Venture Capital Firm people don’t invest in the safe bets, they go for the gold. He said what we really need is an angel investor, someone that can invest a couple of hundred thousand and would be very happy with dividends and a nice exit in a few years, but unless you come up with the technological advantage it’s not for a VC investment.

Thank you Glen for reminding me why we don’t meet with VC’s.